1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an interlocking device for a drawer slide, and more particularly to an equipment disposed at the end of the drawer slide, which facilitates the interlocking of the interlocking device and simples the interlocking structure.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The pull and push design between a drawer and a cabinet is two opposite slide rails that are slideably mounted to each other for enabling the drawer to be movably disposed in the cabinet, and through the slide rails, the drawer can be pushed into or pulled out of the cabinet.
With the time advances, the current drawer slide is further provided on the two slide rails with a stopping member, such as a protruding portion or a protruding block, which prevents the drawer from disengaging from and falling out of the cabinet when it is pushed. The drawer is normally defined with a relatively long longitudinal space for increasing the store capacity. For easy access to the articles inside the drawer, the drawer slide must be designed to allow the drawer to move a relatively long length without disengaging from the slide rails, so that the drawer can be pulled out without falling off the cabinet.
However, a cabinet is usually provided with a plurality of drawers arranged vertically, and after being loaded with articles, each drawer becomes a heavy unit. The slide rails make it easier to pull and push the drawers, and the drawers can be pulled out completely, however, if the cabinet is accidentally inclined by improper use or external factors, such as earthquake, several drawers of the cabinet will be pulled out simultaneously. At this moment, the position of center of the gravity of the cabinet will shift, as a result, the cabinet is likely to fall down to hurt the user or damage the articles inside the cabinet. To solve this potential danger, currently EU stipulates that the plural longitudinal drawers of a cabinet must be provided with an interlocking device to prevent the drawers from being pulled out simultaneously when the cabinet is inclined.
To prevent too many drawers from being pulled out and cause the fall-down of the cabinet, it must ensure that only one drawer can be pulled out at a time. Therefore, an interlinkage device appears on the market and is disposed at the end of the respective slide rails. If one of the drawer slides is pulled, it will use many complicated subassemblies to trigger a connecting rod of the interlinkage device that is disposed between the respective slide rails to prevent other drawer slides from being pulled out. However, this conventional design is very complicated in structure and expensive.
FIG. 1 shows another conventional interlocking device that comprises a plurality of drawer slides 30, a first actuator 31, a second actuator 32, a shaft 33, a locking unit 34, and a transmission unit 35. Each of the drawer slides 30 includes a fixed slide rail 36 and a movable slide rail 37. The first actuator 31 is rotatably and pivotally disposed at the front end of the respective moveable slide rails. The second actuator 32 is fixed at the front end of the respective fixed slide rails 36 and includes a pair of bases 38 and a pair of transmission members 39 on the bases 38. One end of the each transmission member 39 contacts the first actuator 31, the shaft 33 is located between the respective drawer slides 30 in such a manner that both ends of the shaft 33 are connected to the transmission members 39, with the action of the transmission members, the movable slide rail of the drawer slide 30 can move out of the fixed slide rail. The first actuator 31 drives the respective transmission members 39 of the second actuator 32 and the shaft 33 to move back and forth repeatedly, and then the respective transmission members are engaged with and stopped by the locking unit, thus preventing the disengagement of the drawer slide from the fixed slide rail.
Although the second conventional structure has been improved a lot, it still has too many components and its manufacturing and assembling process is still complicated.
The present invention has arisen to mitigate and/or obviate the afore-described disadvantages.